


The Weeping God

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Belts, Bloodplay, Empathy, Impact Play, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Sadism, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 02:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19966783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Will has never had a taste for pain. He’s gone out of his way to avoid causing it for most of his life, so it’s shocking when he finds that helikeshurting bad men. That he likes killing them better, and what is Hannibal if not the worst one of all? The perfect victim for his crimes, for his failure of compassion and care—the place where his empathy can go to die.And Hannibal, the devil on his shoulder (in his blood, in his guts and heart and lungs), is overjoyed to oblige.It’s such a bad idea that it’s sublime.





	The Weeping God

**** Will has always been extraordinarily empathetic. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t the one to call it out for what it was. A child with no frame of reference has no reason to think his experience is anything but universal. He might have made it to his teen years without realizing he was anything different, if not for the people studded throughout his life who pointed it out—teachers, a babysitter, women at church during those brief few months when his dad found religion. They invariably praised him for it, calling him a sweet, sensitive boy and fawning over him.

It made him uncomfortable even then. Even then, Will had the sense that this  _ thing _ that afflicted him was not a gift.

Empathy was usually read as an inclination toward selflessness—the empathetic are those who run toward the screaming rather than away. To help, to soothe, to be of service. Empathy has never seemed particularly selfless to Will. Putting out the fire and making the screaming stop has always seemed an act of self-preservation. How not, when you feel others’ pain as acutely as your own?

When he saw a hungry dog, the inside of Will’s ribs ached despite the bland but filling oatmeal his father had cooked and burned. When his dad cut his thumb on the edge of a hunting knife, Will’s own finger smarted, and the phantom sensation of oozing blood was disorienting. The scraped knees of the girl shoved by bullies on the playground hurt like they were his own, but not as much as their words— _ ugly, fat, tomboy— _ never mind that he couldn’t tell why  _ tomboy _ should hurt him.

Of course he fed the dog, brought the bandaid, tackled the bully. Never mind that the sandwich was all he had for lunch, that his dad scolded him for wasting a bandaid, that the bully gave him a black eye and Will was suspended for fighting.

It wasn’t selfless; it was  _ necessary. _

There were the ones he couldn’t help, though. He’d learned about those when he was nine. There was a lame deer, a fawn that had been savaged by something’s sharp teeth. Its insides were peeking out through slashes in its belly, back legs mangled and useless. Will watched as it dragged itself along the ground, making it one inch, two inches before giving up. It looked up at him with dull, glazed eyes full of bright fear. Will could see its rapid heartbeat moving beneath its skin, could feel an answering pound in his own chest. It just hurt so  _ much. _

There was no thought for what came next—no decision, no plan. He needed to make the pain stop, that’s all. He had the stone in his hand before he decided to pick it up. He brought it down on the deer’s head in the next breath, but not hard enough. It made the most awful noise, like a child screaming.

Will learned how hard it was to crush a living creature’s skull that day, too. He brought the rock down again and again until the deer stopped moving and its sightless eyes stared up at the sun. His cheeks were wet when he finished. His hands were sticky with another creature’s blood, and it burned him like guilt. He smeared it across his face when he went to dash the tears away. He tried wiping it off and only made it worse.

He went home covered in blood, looking like a horror, and his dad went tight-lipped when he saw him. He yanked Will into the house and demanded to know what he had done. Will told him what happened in halting pieces and was hit with the belt for his trouble. His dad didn’t look angry when he did it. He looked scared, and Will could feel his fear—his dad’s and his own, swirling together in a knot that soured his stomach.

_ He’s afraid of me, _ it was the first time Will thought it, but not the last. It was an expression he’d get used to seeing on the people around him.

He learned a lot of things that day.

Will didn’t need a whipping to learn that he shouldn’t do it again—he didn’t need his dad to lecture him in harsh, gruff tones telling Will he couldn’t do things like that. He didn’t  _ want _ to kill a living thing again. He hadn’t liked the way the deer had looked up at him, like it didn’t understand.

Still, he would be lying if he said he hadn’t liked it at all.

He had liked the part where he made its pain stop, completely and for good—the deer’s pain and by extension his own. He curled around that feeling at night, on the spare cot he slept on in the same room as his dad. His dad who was snoring loudly, gone off somewhere in a booze-induced slumber and unlikely to rise if Will decided to cry.

He didn’t feel like crying. He felt hollow and clean. He was left with the puffs of his own breath, rapid-fire like the deer’s dying heartbeats. He rubbed his face into the threadbare blanket that smelled of mothballs and sweat and hid his eyes from the glare of the trailer park lights outside his window.

He did like it. He liked the part where it all went quiet.

* * *

Will has never had a taste for pain. He’s gone out of his way to avoid causing it for most of his life, even going so far as to let a suspect stab him in the line of duty, so it’s shocking when he finds that he  _ likes _ hurting bad men. That he likes killing them better. And what is Hannibal if not the worst one of all? The perfect victim for his crimes, for his failure of compassion and care—the place where his empathy can go to die.

He discovers his taste for hurting Hannibal in the midst of betrayal and genuine rage. Revenge feels like retribution, and it leaves a righteous afterburn in his mouth, smooth like fine whiskey.

But after the harm, after the betrayal, after the ways they rip each other’s guts out again and again, after a swan dive from a very high place, Will finds he has no more righteousness to conjure up. He forfeit it when he left his family behind, when he bled his morals out and they gleamed black in the moonlight.

When his rage burns out, Will finds he still has the taste for it, for causing pain. And Hannibal, the devil on his shoulder (in his blood, in his guts and heart and lungs), is overjoyed to oblige.

It’s such a bad idea it’s sublime.

They’re sitting on the floor in a cold, shitty cabin. The floorboards are wet and the walls smell of mildew. The floor is actually rotting away in places, leaving a clear view of the packed dirt below. There are things moving down there.

It reminds Will of the places he grew up, which means it makes his brain itch and his skin crawl. He can smell the blood of a young deer on his skin.

They’re sitting on the floor, a moldering bearskin rug keeping the worst of the damp from soaking into their clothes. Earlier Will coaxed a fire into life in the dusty fireplace, and they’re probably breathing mold spores and asbestos dust even now. They’re sitting close by necessity, almost touching so that the radiant heat from the fire can reach them both equally. They sit too near the flames, and Will likes the way the heat seems to burn his face without burning. It’s nearly suffocating.

He’s somewhere violent in his mind, halfway between past and present when Hannibal touches him. It’s not that the touch is out of left field, because it isn’t. They’ve been through six safe houses in as many months, and in that time there hadn’t been a breach of personal space so much as an evaporation of the concept. It didn’t make sense, not when they’ve seen each other naked and broken, insensate with fever and cold. Not when they’ve tended each other’s wounds and pressed close at night to stop the shivering nightmares.

The touch is fine. It’s even a gentle touch, as all of Hannibal’s have been since their rebirth from the sea. Hannibal hasn’t put a hand on him in an unkind way since he tried to crack Will’s skull open to see what was inside. His hands always feel like penance. And so the touch on his shoulder feels like penance now, hesitant with everything that has only so recently been allowed.

The touch is fine, but Will is not. Sometimes he visits the waking nightmares in his mind, the shades of kills both borrowed and committed—and sometimes he brings them back with him. His hand is on Hannibal’s before he’s decided to put it there, viper-quick and as brutal. He wrenches Hannibal’s hand back, bending the fingers at an unnatural angle so he can feel the delicate wrist joint creaking beneath his thumb.

A noise falls out of Hannibal’s mouth, born out of surprise as much as pain, and Will can feel Hannibal’s pulse quicken in the time it takes him to let go. He’s thrown a lot of dirt onto his empathy, tried to bury it especially where Hannibal is concerned, but it rises again and again like the proverbial phoenix. It just won’t die, so Will knows what it means when Hannibal’s eyes go dark and intent. He can feel the answering heat coiling low in his own belly.

He drops Hannibal’s wrist as though it’s burned him, and he doesn’t apologize but he does move away, so far that he falls out of the fire’s warmth and his pants are starting to pick up the damp from the spare floor. His own form of penance.

“Will—”

“Hannibal, don’t.”

“I only mean to say—”

_ “Don’t.” _

“Very well.”

Will’s voice is harsh and cutting, and Hannibal miraculously falls silent. He’s disturbed and not at all surprised to find that hurting Hannibal in  _ this _ way does absolutely nothing for him. Hurting him by separation carries no satisfaction. It’s not the same as hurting him up close, as though physical pain is just another way of finding communion with each other, the sundered conjoined beast that longs to dig into its beloved’s body to find its way back to togetherness.

Hannibal watches him from across the room, still sitting where Will left him. His face is blank and impassive, showing no sign of the hurt that Will can still feel roiling beneath the surface.

_ Rejection, separation, loss, longing,  _ pain.

He wonders if this is how Hannibal looked while he waited for Will, waited in prison for three years. Wonders if this is how he felt.

He doesn’t need to wonder because he knows they are the same and therefore simply knows it is so.

He’ll relent. He will, and he knows he will. He will hold out his arm to Hannibal, bid him come, apologize without apologies. He will.

But in a minute.

Because it turns out that if this isn’t his preferred way of making Hannibal suffer, he can find beauty in it nevertheless. He’ll draw it out just a little longer because he enjoys it.

A minute passes. Another.

He blows out a breath and fixes Hannibal with a hard look, and Hannibal waits, expectant. Like he knows something is about to happen, the way predators know a storm is coming while people are unaware.

Will lets it out in a rush before he can change his mind. “I don’t want to hear a word out of you. You can say stop, and I’ll stop. I swear to god, if you say anything else, I’m walking out of here. Do you understand me?”

There’s a beat where Will wonders if he’s gone too far, if he’s finally lost his mind, but then Hannibal nods his head slowly.

“Good,” Will says, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Take off your clothes and get on your knees.”

Surely Hannibal, whose mind follows seemingly infinite tracks at once, expected this at least in part—but then again, maybe not. Hannibal sucks in a breath that’s audible in the still, fetid air of the room, silent but for the crackling of the log in the fireplace. He stays very, very still for long seconds, and there’s a moment where Will thinks he might get up and leave. Where he thinks Hannibal might actually try to kill him again—it flits through his mind as a possibility—but then Hannibal is rising to his feet, and only to shuck his clothes with the strange leonine grace that only he seems to possess.

His clothes hit the floor, and the soft sound of fabric on wood rings out as loud as gunshots. First the faded grey sweater Hannibal was wearing, then the white shirt creased by rough living, then his shoes and slacks and socks. Finally his underwear, and he’s standing naked before Will.

Will swallows against a throat gone suddenly dry. He’s seen Hannibal naked before but not like this. Not laid out before him like a feast, and never at his behest. Hannibal watches Will watching him, and he sinks to his knees slowly. He looks wholly at ease in his skin, unconcerned with his nudity or what Will might do to him, and Will is both envious and resentful.

He stalks closer, circling Hannibal slowly and taking him in from all angles. It feels like a rare chance to observe Hannibal without hearing his thoughts on the matter, his infuriatingly accurate interpretations of exactly what Will is thinking. Hannibal waits, quiescent. Will stops behind him, enjoying the line of tension that takes up residence in Hannibal’s shoulders after a time. He doesn’t like being unable to see Will, doesn’t like not knowing what’s coming when he can’t read it in Will’s face, in his body language.

Good.

Will draws the moment out, reveling in Hannibal’s discomfort, before planting his hand squarely between Hannibal’s shoulder blades. He pushes him forward roughly, and Hannibal goes, falling to his hands and knees with a slight sound. Will likes him like this too, exposed and fragile. He cups the cock hanging half-hard between Hannibal’s legs—not with intent, but just because he can—and enjoys the small gasp it earns him. He leans forward and spreads Hannibal’s cheeks, blows a puff of air against his hole to see it twitch and watch the muscles in his back tense and tighten.

“I’d lick you here, another time,” Will says casually. He strokes a hand down Hannibal’s back to feel the slight tremor there. “I’d take you apart until you couldn’t even remember your own name, until you can’t remember anything but me. I’d make you feel so good until you begged for it.”

Hannibal moans, and Will lets him go, getting to his feet and moving back so Hannibal can feel the cold air rushing in. So his hips thrust back against the lack that Will left behind him.

Will chuckles. “Another time.”

He walks over where Hannibal’s clothes are lying discarded and slides the belt from his slacks. Hannibal turns toward the sound, and Will makes the same noise he made when one of his dogs got into something they shouldn’t.

“Face forward. Don’t move.”

Hannibal makes a displeased noise but turns around and does as he’s told. Will holds the belt by the buckle and trails the loose end over Hannibal’s skin in long, sweeping strokes. He can see Hannibal struggling not to move when the leather skims his ribs, so Will does it a few more times just to see him fight for control. He runs the belt over Hannibal’s ass, letting it skim between his cheeks just briefly, just to tease.

He keeps it up for long minutes, until Hannibal relaxes into it, so the first hard snap of the belt against his back takes him off guard. He yelps, and Will brings the belt down three more times in quick succession. None of the subsequent blows draw as much as a single sound from Hannibal, but Will finds he doesn’t mind.

It just gives him an excuse to try harder.

He lays a lattice of welts across Hannibal’s back, carefully attuned to every minute spasm and twitch of the body beneath him. He moves lower and snaps the belt against the back of Hannibal’s thighs, letting the leather curl around his legs and bite into the flesh. He alternates legs, hitting first one and then the other, smacking the same patch of flesh over and over until it turns cherry red and then splits under the force of the blows.

He does manage to drag a sound out of Hannibal eventually, but not before he’s sweating and aching from the exertion—barely-there whimpers that are even sweeter for how hard-won they are.

The back of Hannibal’s legs are bloody and raw, and Will suddenly wants nothing more than to taste them. He gets on the floor and licks blood from the wounds, making sure to dig his stubble in as he presses his face to Hannibal’s overheated skin. Hannibal moans and writhes, jerking forward to get away while Will holds him in an iron grip.

Will pulls back and slaps along one particularly sore looking cut, and Hannibal gasps. “Stay,” he says, and Hannibal stays.

Will makes use of his free hand, pressing the heel of it into his groin where his cock is straining at his pants. It’s not enough, but it takes the edge off. Getting off isn’t the point anyway. Not here, not now.

Hannibal’s cuts have started to weep anew, and Will laps up the fresh blood that flows there. He drags his teeth along the sensitive skin, and Hannibal moans loud and long. He’s getting vocal, and it gives Will a dark thrill to think that he’s systematically breaking down Hannibal’s ironclad control.

Will snaps himself out of his fevered reverie to find Hannibal gripping his erection, stroking it in time to the biting licks against his flesh, and Will’s eyes narrow.

He grabs Hannibal by the hair and wrenches his head back. “Did I say you could touch yourself?”

Hannibal’s hand flies away from his cock which is leaking and red, hanging heavy between his thighs. It looks painfully hard, and Will’s own cock jerks in sympathy, straining against the confines of his pants. It’s the only part of Will that’s given to sympathy right now. The rest of him is still exulting in the heady power of Hannibal obedient and kneeling before him, mute and on his hands and knees because Will wanted it.

A reedy whine escapes Hannibal’s throat when Will slaps him across the face—not hard, a strike meant to humiliate rather than hurt—but he keeps his mouth clamped firmly shut.

“You can answer me,” Will says.

“No,” Hannibal says in a tone that manages to convey awe and affection in spite of everything.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Will says absently.

“Do what?”

“Show me your soft underbelly. Show me where it hurts, where you love me. It makes me want to maul and tear, to twist the knife and rip you apart.”

“I know,” Hannibal says. “I love to see it.” And he has never sounded prouder or more in love.

Will shivers in the wake of such terrible acceptance. It stops him cold but only for a moment, only until he remembers his game and hits Hannibal again, in the face and harder this time. Hard enough to knock him to the floor and start a trail of blood trickling from a cut on his cheek.

Hannibal shakes it off and clambers back to hands and knees without a sound, and Will rewards him by smoothing the hair from his forehead. He wipes the line of blood from Hannibal’s face with a thumb, then sucks it into his mouth and smiles around the taste of copper.

The look in Hannibal’s eyes might be lust or murder, and Will has always loved playing dangerous games.

“Now don’t talk to me again.”

Hannibal nods. He’s not backing down, and Will is content to do this for as long as he is. It feels like an elaborate dance, the one they’ve done since they met—goading each other to do their worst, because they’re really so good at being bad.

“I can’t do this to anyone else,” Will says, because he’s riding high on violence and Hannibal’s silence makes him bold.

Hannibal wants to say something, he can  _ see _ it. He can see how it burns him to have something incisive to add, but to be barred from doing so. His frustration makes Will smile.

“I can’t treat anyone like this because people deserve better. They deserve to be free from pain, to not have cruelty inflicted on them, but you don’t, do you?” He picks up the belt and whips Hannibal again, layering his stroke over the red welts already staining his skin, and the bruises will surely be black and blue tomorrow. “You deserve everything I could do to you and more. I could do anything to you, and it would still never touch the debt you owe.” He hits him again, letting the end of the belt curl around Hannibal’s ribs on the downstroke. Hannibal doesn’t cry out, but he flinches. Will thinks he sees blood.

“You’re an endless sea of depravity made to slake my own worst impulses. I want to murder you. I want to beat you to death with my goddamn bare hands. I want to make you scream and bleed and beg for mercy,  _ and you fucking like it.” _

Will throws the belt down with a growl and drops to his knees with a force that jars him down to his bones. He drags Hannibal close and covers his mouth with his own. Hannibal meets him with teeth and tongue, and Will groans into his mouth, licking his way in and pressing closer when Hannibal grips his arms bruisingly tight. It’s less a kiss and more trying to swallow each other whole.

His cheeks are salty-wet, and it feels like his own back is on fire when he presses Hannibal’s against the floor and seats himself between his legs. He drapes himself over Hannibal’s body, sure that the weight of him is opening the welts on Hannibal’s back because he can feel the bloody ache racing up his spine.

Hannibal reaches up to cup Will’s face, to hold him in place so he can kiss him more thoroughly, and Will ruts against him, hard enough to grind his injuries into the rotting wood beneath them. Hannibal moans into his mouth and thrusts back, and Will is  _ hurting him— _ and Will is crying with the pain of it, scores along his back and ribs and  _ heart, _ but he is absolutely not sorry. He’s never been less sorry for anything in his life. He just hurts along with Hannibal, and that’s good and right. Everything is exactly as it should be.

Sensation blurs; surety of time, place, and body blurs. There’s a hand and a mouth, a sigh and a sob. Something feels knife-bright and liquid-sharp. There’s salt in his mouth, and it might be blood or it might be tears, or it might be come. It might be all three.

Everything is wonderful, which is to say everything is terrible, and then he blacks out.

* * *

He wakes up at all, which at least means Hannibal didn’t decide to kill him in his sleep. He wakes to Hannibal staring at him like he’s  _ fascinating, _ which is less than comforting.

“I’m assuming I may speak now?”

Will can feel himself flush down to his toes, which was of course Hannibal’s intended reaction. He sits up and narrows his eyes at Hannibal, who’s back in his clothes and looking none the worse for the wear. He’s leaning back in the sole rickety chair in this godforsaken house, despite the fact that it must hurt like a bitch.

“You’re only asking that to embarrass me.”

“Will,” Hannibal says, and it’s entirely reproving. “I’ve never had any interest in your shame. I’m asking because I’m interested in knowing the perimeters of your game. How far does it go?”

“You—” Will shakes his head, deciding he doesn’t want to deal with the implications of that right now. “Yes, you can talk. We’re done now.” Hannibal had cleaned him up while he was out which begged the question, “How long was I out?”

Hannibal glances at his watch and gestures toward Will. “Not long. I took some liberties, as you see.”

The fact that Will is clean and dry and tucked neatly back into his pants attests to that—and the fact that he isn’t still smeared with Hannibal’s blood because there  _ had _ been blood, he has the clarity to remember that now. After what Will just did, it seems only fair. Speaking of liberties—

“How’s your back?” Will asks, refusing to let himself wince at the question. It’s an ugly thing to look at, but he meant every word he said. He isn’t sorry. Some part of him exulted in harming Hannibal. In  _ punishing _ him. Some part of him always would. That doesn’t mean he’s unmoved by Hannibal’s suffering, though. It doesn’t mean he’s indifferent to Hannibal’s well-being.

“Fine,” Hannibal says, as though they’re discussing the weather. “I was able to wash and dress the wounds myself, none of them particularly bad. It will heal.”

“Can I—” Will hesitates before deciding to go for broke. In for a penny. “Wait for me, next time? Let me do it.”

Hannibal studies him. He knows Will, probably better than anyone ever has. Sees him, in a way that means his gaze feels like being flayed alive, all secrets revealed. Will lets him look anyway.

“All right.”

“Thank you,” Will says and finds that he means it.

They don’t talk about it later. They don’t need to.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm perpetually screaming about Hannibal and talking about fic on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture)—come say hi! You can also check out my [original work](http://hopezane.com) here if you're interested.


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